A murder charge was dismissed against a Lubbock teenager charged as an adult after he was arrested three years ago in connection with the beating death of a 50-year-old man in central Lubbock.
Lubbock district Judge Douglas Freitag signed a motion from the Lubbock County District Attorney’s Office to dismiss the murder charge against 19-year-old Steven Tobias Salazar, who was set to stand trial on Monday, Sept. 22 in the Sept. 27, 2022 beating death of Robert Stewart.
“Justice cannot be served by further proceedings in this matter,” states the motion to dismiss signed on Aug. 29, two weeks after his co-defendant pleaded guilty to a count of murder in Stewart’s death.
“There was no physical evidence linking him to that murder only the word of the co-defendants,” said prosecutor Laura Beth Fossett.
Salazar’s attorney, Matt Morrow, declined to comment.
Salazar was arrested on Oct. 3, 2022 and had been in custody for nearly three years while awaiting a resolution to his case, first at the Lubbock County Juvenile Justice Center, then at the Lubbock County Detention Center. He was one of three people arrested in the case.
Bailey Forrest, 20, appeared on Aug. 15 before Freitag in the 140th District Court with her attorney, Jesse Mendez, and pleaded guilty to a count of murder in the in exchange for a 20-year prison sentence.
The case is no longer pending against a 16-year-old girl, who was charged for her role in the case, officials said.
Investigating a death in central Lubbock
The case stemmed from a Lubbock Metropolitan Special Crimes Unit investigation that began on Sept. 27, 2022 when Lubbock police officers responded to the scene initially to help the city’s solid waste department with a vehicle blocking an alley. Responding officers found Stewart in the back seat of his vehicle and EMS crews pronounced him dead at the scene.
Stewart, who lived about six blocks north of where his vehicle was found, suffered what investigators believed to be blunt-force trauma to his head and torso, according to a redacted probable cause affidavit. Evidence at the scene indicated Stewart was killed elsewhere and his body was cleaned to hide blood evidence, court documents state.
The next day, a tipster told police Stewart was killed in an apartment in the 2100 block of 51st Street.
Detectives learned that during the investigation into an unrelated aggravated robbery case, Forrest’s parents said their daughter lived in the apartment, court documents state.
A second tipster called into the Crime Line number and said Forrest and two other people beat a man to death with a pole, wrapped his body in carpet and dumped the car and body in an alley.
Investigators searched the apartment and found large areas of blood and evidence of a cleanup. They also found a site where evidence appeared to have been burned. However, a partially burned wooden club was recovered from the burn site, court documents state.
Forrest and the 16-year-old girl reportedly told investigators they were present when Stewart was killed, saying Salazar beat Stewart to death.
However, the investigator found that Forrest and the girl’s statements contained inconsistencies about their involvement in Stewart’s death and obtained a warrant for their cell phones.
The next day, a forensic investigator linked a fingerprint in Stewart’s vehicle to Forrest.
Lubbock police arrested Forrest on Sept. 30 of 2022 on a murder warrant. The 16-year-old girl also surrendered to police.
Meanwhile, police officials issued a news release on Oct. 3, 2022, identifying Salazar, who was 16 at the time, as a murder suspect. A subsequent release was issued with a public plea to help find him, describing him as “a threat to the public.”
He was arrested later that day and was taken to the Lubbock County Juvenile Justice Center.
In a January 2023 hearing, Freitag found that prosecutors met their burden to charge Salazar for murder as an adult and he was booked into the Lubbock County Detention Center on his 17th birthday.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Murder charge dismissed against Lubbock teen arrested in man’s 2022 beating death
Reporting by Gabriel Monte, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
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